Comment by makron

Arcane shot dispels this before dealing damage.However it is still way too overpowered against warriors in 1 on 1.

Comment by Osiriss

May sound like a rant but as a prot pally in 5 mans, I hate priest healers because of this spell. I run oom because instead of avoiding or taking in dmg I am absorbing it.

I don't know how priest heals work but if at all save this spell for boss pulls only, most trash don't do a lot of dmg and I for one like to chain pull but can't when I am sitting at 10 - 5% mana

Comment by Snuttemormor

Is it fair to assume this would absorb somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500 damage at lvl 80 with ~2000 sp and talented?

Comment by zinninator

is this spell still horrible for casting on tanks, as it removes aggro, or creates a lot of aggro to the priest?

Comment by airtonix

is this spell still horrible for casting on tanks, as it removes aggro, or creates a lot of aggro to the priest?

No. if you're finding that you're :

pulling aggro from shielding ANYONE

tank not generating rage while shielded.

Then leave group because you don't actually have a tank.

Comment by dreadblood

this is great because the debuff is gone before the spell ends

Comment by niconinja7

While Power Word: Shield is active, do warriors and bear druids gain rage from being hit?

Comment by moggan

...a shielded bear or warrior DOES gain rage from being hit, its a reduced amount compared to unshielded...

I suspect the rage gained is from blocking/parrying/dodging incoming attacks (see the earlier comment by Nuronv). The rage loss you notice would be from the damage you are not taking (absorbed by the shield).

Comment by typ0

Most importantly, it prevents you from getting dazed while active!

Comment by Edymnion

Also, if you have Glyph of Power Word: Shield, the healing it causes can crit.

You don't get any extra healing from it, but it can activate Divine Aegis for a double bubble.

Comment by battlet3chvx

With spellpower flask, 4 piece tier8 (+250 spellpower), and full raid buffs my PWSs absorb between 7800-8000 damage. This is of course with over 3000 spellpower raid buffs.

Bubble spamming is extremely powerful on fights where there's near constant AOE and you can simply go down the raid list and cast PWS on raid members.

You'll never run OOM either because your screen is just spammed with Rapture procs. ;)

Comment by TokiLoki

I was curious as to how damage was calculated and it it were affected by other damage reducing effects. Say you have PW:S up and your tank has shield wall up. Does that mitigation translate into the shield and make it last longer, or are "reducing damage taken" effects such as that, strictly for just that, actual damage?

Comment by Fungalsporebat

Nice spell i would like to know for sure if the damge u can make it do is just for priest or for anyoen and lets say your in a raid and some lv ? hits you for way more damge than the sheild holds does it not damge you at al for that one attack and if it does would it relflect 50 % of *that damage? i'd realy like to know

Comment by mark211175

I hate when Warriors and Druids still say too you, dont shield me. As it is mentioned that in patch 3.1 warriors/druids gain rage from the shield. I can't still convince them to use my shield, because as full discipline it makes my roll a lot easier.

Comment by Code2004

I've been looking at this for a while... Say about 40 minutes. And I still don't get how it's useful to anyone but the caster. I mean, it can get you out of tricky situations, provided you buff the hell out of it via the Disc tree. When completely buffed it provides about 7350 dmg protection - assuming 3000 SP. In one of the above posts... And I quote...

4. If geared with some of the best items for healing, this "crap spell" absorbs around 9000 damage, heals for 1750 and may deal 5000 damage. Practically, a 10k heal and 5k damage in ONE INSTANT CAST that is not even expensive!

Well, it's not a heal, obviously. The damage retort is only 45% (which has approximately the same effect as, say, peeing on a HC dungeon boss's shoes) and has a chance of healing an amount that can be illustrated as less than a tenth of a rightly buffed (and geared) Flash Heal or Greater Heal (natural).

Then, of course, there's the mana costs. To this, I say that PW:S is a great buff to have before battle, but that's really its only use... Perhaps? I mean, it costs 13% base mana (which ~=502 mana), whereas Flash Heal costs ~= 13.8% base mana. Flash Heal crits though, are ahead, quite greatly, of the PW:S damage. Not sure of the formula for working out the crit of heals... I know it's not 2.00*amount_healed, but I know that an 80 with 1.6k Int + class constant for critical bonus ~= 176% damage (not including CR). So let's assume this figure and multiply it by a 3k SP Flash Heal (fully buffed) ~= 5.5k.

5.5k*1.76 = 9.68k

Tbh... Looking at Flash Heal now. Flash Heal's pretty crap. So let's take a look at it's big brother Greater Heal, which can output ~=12k healing rightly buffed, for the approximate cost of 2.3 to 2.5* that of Flash Heal (factoring buffs) and 1.8 to 2.0* that of Flash Heal (natural skills).

12k*1.76 = 21.12k

Factoring in mana costs, using spell base (i.e. w/o buffs, 'cos I'm way too tired to work that out):

However, if you worked out the m:k ratio of shield once it's buffed with healing, I'm more or less sure that it'd give a ratio worthy of keeping it up as much as possible. Also, given the fact that it's an instant cast (+GCD), Power Word: Shield can help you get out of sticky situations quick.

But I can surely say that it is NOT worth buffing to full through your talent tree, in my opinion.

This was all done at 4:00 to 5:00 in the morning: I have no life.

Icingtwinkle - Aerie Peak

Comment by carnathagia

In Cataclysm, this spell now provides an aura with the absorb value in your combat log, so you can see the value of your shield and how much is left after every hit.

So for an extra 1000 mana, you get roughly 6000 more absorption. Seems like a good deal to me.

Comment by Ty52

atm its a crappy spell if not a disc priest, even a DoT does more dmg that what it shields

yes...obviously being disc improves horribly the shield...but it was still a decent spell even being holy or shadow ..

Comment by Sindell

I would just like to point out that "Power Word: Shield" does not stop a warrior from gaining rage.

This spell is huge part of my rotation on my low level priest. Put it on your tank before he pulls. Then when the mob breaks through it either cast it again, or cast a renew and ready a heal or flash heal (depending on the whether the "weakened soul" debuff is active or not). This is a good way of keeping threat low from early on in any encounter for when you cast that first spell to react to damage.

This spell also buys time for when you need to switch to healing other members of your party. So overall a very good ability.

Comment by knotwrite

As of 4.0.6.13623, PW:S now costs 34%, up from 25% in hopes of discouraging shield spam.

Comment by pimpinelephant

It should be noted that Power Word: Shield has gone through two separate changes since patch 4.0.6. The first being, as mentioned before,The mana cost of Power Word: Shield has been increased by approximately 31%, but its effect has been increased by 208%.The second change, which took affect soon after the release of patch 4.0.6, increased the mana cost by an additional 33%.

The reasoning for this, at least from Blizzard's perspective, was to prevent Discipline Priests from merely casting Power Word: Shield repeatedly, or "shield spamming". It had reached the point where Discipline Priests were primarily using Power Word: Shield without having to cast much of anything else.

It should also be noted that currently the tooltip for Power Word: Shield is incorrect when displaying the mana cost. The tooltip is still displaying 25% of base mana, as is Wowhead. This is incorrect as the approximate mana cost is about 33-34% of base mana (25% * 33% = 8.25% + 25% = 33.25%). Hypothetically speaking, if you had 25% of your base mana remaining, the icon for Power Word: Shield would display as if you were able to cast it, although upon casting it, it will display a "Not enough mana" message. This is subject to change either in a patch or maintenance in the near future of course.

Comment by Dtemplar

Seeing no one found it useful to say that

1. Base mana at 85 for priests - 205902. 33% of that is 6853.33333 etc

So current cost of PWS is 6853.

Edit. Just tested it seems like the figure is more around 6300. That's when it allowed me to cast it while testing it. Seems someone screwed up. Its more like 31-32% base mana cost than 33%. Test it for yourself.

Comment by seahen

With Cataclysm, this has gone from way too weak at low levels to way too strong. At levels 12-14 in Wrath, quests were so hard (even in heirloom shoulders) that I was trying to level through battlegrounds to get access to the Dungeon Finder. Now at 23 in Cata, I can tank five or six green world mobs while spamming Smite, without taking damage. And that's on a holy spec, not disc. Bubble hearthing isn't just for pallies anymore!

Comment by seahen

I believe this generates threat all at once, even if some of the absorption goes unused. This creates a disadvantage for absorbs compared to heals, since overheals don't contribute to threat.

While healing low-level classic dungeons on my priest alt, I sometimes pulled aggro off the tank. This always happened immediately after I'd cast PW:S on the tank, and that PW:S almost always expired before it ran out.

NB: I had 4 heirlooms and was almost entirely dungeon-leveled, so I was probably on the highest possible gear curve without being a gold buyer or former 29 twink.

Comment by Feranda

Power Word: Shield does 25% amount it shield as threat when you cast it. Doesnt matter if shield isnt used or is destroyed/removed, threat still stays.

Comment by Elysianfield

Duration changed in 4.1, down 15 secs from 30.personally i find this very annoying because the debuff weakened soul are not applied at exactly the same time as sheild. Now the shield and debuff are the same duration, its seems impossible to keep the shield up all the time. Bad times.Why was the duration reduced so much?

The simple answer is that in 30 seconds, players were almost guaranteed to take enough damage to break the shield, so very few shields were ever wasted.

The more thorough answer:The primary problem with Power Word: Shield and, more generally but to a lesser extent, absorption techniques as a whole, is that they have the potential to trivialize content. This is mainly a result of how healing works.

Fundamentally, the challenge for healers isn't really to be able to heal damage; rather, the challenge is being able to heal in a certain amount of time. This challenge is made even more complicated when several people need to be healed at once, since it makes it much harder to coordinate heals to avoid redundancy. Mana, as a healing constraint, only really enters the picture once you are able to consistently heal through the (almost always) cyclical nature of PvE damage.

Shield spamming allowed priests to mitigate the primary challenge by extending the time that healers had to heal through the difficult periods of incoming damage such as Heroic Magma's Spew or Nefarian's Lightning. Although these abilities might not kill players outright, there are other sufficient sources of incoming raid damage that put a practical limit on how long you have to heal people up after them. Shields allow a player who might have died from spew + one spit, to instead die from spew + two spits, an extra few seconds that really does make a huge difference for a fight.

This can trivialize content in any number of ways. Perhaps the other healers can take the time to use more efficient heals, making their mana last longer, giving the dps a few extra seconds to down a boss (10 seconds for a 10 man can be greater than 1 million extra damage). Perhaps it means the raid can save an important raid cooldown (tranquility, barrier, divine hymn, etc.) until later.

Note that Blizzard doesn't frown upon this. They recognize that one of a disc priests greatest tools is, in fact, damage mitigation. The problem is simply that with the amount of raid damage that exists in cataclysm, it was *very* hard to have a shield that disappeared due to time rather than damage. A priest could reasonably expect that every shield that was cast would be consumed, eventually. If that player wasn't hit by spit, he would definitely be hit by the spew that was still on a 20 second cooldown. This helped make shield extraordinarily cost effective since there was very little "overheal".

Although they could "fix" the problem by raising the mana cost again, and again to discourage its use, it would just put the problem off until later tiers of content while giving newer or less geared players considerably more trouble. Furthermore, if they changed it's mana cost or strength too much, they risk having the spell becoming ostracized by players (much like the "most efficient' priest heal in the game, Lightwell). They had to find a way to change the efficiency of the spell without changing it's power. They did this by cutting the duration in half, which still lets players strategically spam shields to mitigate incoming damage, but forces players to use shields more conservatively, or at least more thoughtfully, since there is no guarantee that the shield will be used.

Comment by fklein4

You may have noticed that when this spell was cast on a target, a debuff appeared on the target called, "Weakened Soul." This debuff simply refers to the fact that the target can not be shielded again for 15 seconds. While this is relevant in PVP, the shield lasts for 15 seconds if not dispelled, so this debuff is of no worry otherwise. However, when PVP'ing against a priest, you will want to dispell the shield, as they won't be able to re-cast it while this debuff is active. Other comments address dispelling Power Word: Shield in PVP combat.

Comment by fklein4

Echo of Light: Additonal Healing When Shielded

When Glyph of Power Word: Shield is used, not only does Power Word: Shield heal the target for an additional 20% of the absorbed amount, it also does additonal healing for six seconds with Echo of Light based on the amount of mastery one has.

Comment by fklein4

The Renew spell is commonly cast on targets with Power Word: Shield to heal them over time. The Holy talent tree has a Chakra talent that affects Power Word: Shield that is also noteworthy here. I am unsure why this isn't listed on the Modified By tab. All direct healing spells refresh the duration of the Renew spell when Serenity is active. This includes Power Word: Shield. If done appropriately with your other heals, this can save the priest time and mana. Just another advantage to this beneficial spell.

The Body and Soul rank 1 + 2 talents have a tremendous benefit for tanks with this spell, (that is why they are listed on the Modified By tab) as they increase the target's speed for four seconds by 30% and 60% respectively. I am frequently asked for the "speed buff" from tanks prior to them charging into battle.

Comment by DesertFly3

This seems to be working like the Paladin's divine shield now, in that it appears to allow hearthing while taking damage.

Comment by Alnair

The way PW:S functions in MoP is different than in Cataclysm mostly because of the way mana is used and regenerated.

On live, discpline Priests use PW:S fairly liberally because although it costs a fairly high amount of mana, Disc has very strong mana regeneration at high gear levels from Rapture inter alia; so strong in fact that Disc Priests can spam PW:S for a limited period of time and essentially obviate certain boss mechanics.

In MoP, PW:S will be much more costly and Disc Priests will not have nerely the same regeneration from Rapture because Rapture will no longer scale with intellect and will instead scale with spirit. Instead of returning more mana than it costs (as it does now), Rapture will merely allow you to cast one very efficient PW:S every 12 seconds and any other PW:S outside of that 12-seconds period is very inefficient.

Essentially, if you use PW:S only once every 12 seconds and it procs Rapture every 12 seconds then the Heals-per-mana (HPM) and Heals-per-second of PW:S are both equivalent to casting Penance on cooldown, which is strong in both cases. But if you try to spam PW:S regardless of the rapture cooldown it's HPM drops by a factor of 2.5 making it on par with spamming Flash Heal, and in fact the HPS of Spamming PW:S is no better than spamming Flash Heal and it puts a Weakened Soul Debuff on each target.

If you wish to preshield, you would be better off using Spirit Shell (now a one minute cooldown) and spamming either Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing to build up a pre-shield without worrying about the weakened souls debuff, and using flash heal for emergency heals since Flash Heal at least reduces the Weakened Soul Debuff on any target.

Comment by DoraTE

PWS has an issue that if you try and shield a target with the weakened soul debuff, it will activate the spell and wait for you to click on another friendly target, rather than cause an error and bug out. To solve this place a /use 1 in a macro after PWS. e.g.

Comment by perculia

Comment by Justincaser

This spell scaling is broken since 5.0 making low level priest immortal.Just move the slider at 60 then at 90, observe that the base absorb difference is a factor of 3 (+ spell power).However the health factor difference between 60 and 90 is 50. Fifty. (about 8'000 hp at 60, and 400'000+ at 90) If you ever see a bubble that can absorb 400'000 hp call 911. Well that's what is going on at low level.

Comment by Azerothi

The PW:S is really useful. For example, in a instance when someone is about to die you cast the shield on them it's going to buy you some time until you land a decent heal on them.